Mourned as a Friend
by Fantasizing-Lady-Knight
Summary: The world can be cruelly ironic. Even the most heroic of people can die, and often do. Some die mourning life...whereas others die mourning unrequited love... (KD) Is sad.


I'm feeling angsty, so I wrote this. I'm sorry…it's very depressing.

Disclaimer: I don't own. Duh.

I'm sorry if this is too depressing for most. I'm not sure why I wrote it. Just got an urge to write a tragedy about unrequited love and death.

Mourned as a Friend

By Fantasizing-Lady-Knight

It was so ironic. So painfully, cruelly ironic. So ironic that she was sure that the gods were probably laughing at her.

It wasn't drawn out. It wasn't "courageous" or "valiant". It just happened. Quickly, before she could even really register what was happening…

She had been in the heat of battle, her country's war-cry on her lips, blood dripping in scarlet streaks down her glimmering glaive. She had been upon Peachblossom's back, slicing left and right, calling her soldiers to her—the fifty under her command.

Then it had happened.

With a red hot flash of pain, a blade pierced her midriff from a gap in her armor. Her eyes widened and became unfocused, her head spinning as she lost balance and tumbled to the ground, crimson welling from between her plate armor.

She could hear Peachblossom's war cry, and perceived the sound of horse-hooves ringing blows upon armored foes. Then she heard a shrill whinny. A large body thumped to the ground. A retreat was called in Scanran. Then silence.

She didn't need a doctor to know that she would die. She didn't even have any hope at all. It was a stomach wound. She could smell the foul reek. She knew not even the most skilled of healers could save her.

The groans of the injured and dying echoed in the clearing. She could smell the presence of the portal to death. Dead or almost so were strewn everywhere, all around her—mostly foot soldiers and Scanran warriors, splattered with blood, crying with pain.

That was the irony. In the end even she, the Protector of the Small, lady knight, was no better than those commoners and foreign men who would never again see their homeland. She was just as doomed as they were, and her fate was no more "glorious" or "heroic" than theirs.

A pair of sparkling blue eyes suddenly floated into her mind's eye, and her mutilated stomach gave a half-hearted flutter. That laugh. That smile. And she would never see them again.

It was rather silly that she had nursed her maiden's fancy for him for six years. Six whole years she had blushed and stammered around him. All for naught.

She could feel the life seeping out of her body now, and she sighed in resolution. She hadn't done anything about him for six years, three of which she'd been a knight. She had watched Neal be happily married, watched Yuki have children…but she hadn't done anything.

It was almost funny that she should die this way, thinking of such things. Such things as unrequited love…for she admitted to herself that it was indeed love.

It was almost like a ballad sung by a bard—how the heroic knight died grieving the loss of his fair princess. But she loved no princess, and no one would ever know what she died thinking of. Only the wind and the gods—even then only maybe.

She attempted to twitch her fingers and found that she couldn't, and she could no longer see due to blood loss. She only had a few minutes left, but she would spend them thinking.

Once more she imagined him—she could visualize every bit of him, from his dark, ruffled hair to his large freckle on the left side of his nose. She visualized every part of him she loved—every bit of him. Even the freckle.

"Well, dear Protector, how are you today?" she heard him ask. He had said this sentence so many times to her in the last three years that she could hear it perfectly in her ears, every emphasized syllable and ringing word, sweet and musical to her dying ears. She had scolded him so many times in those past three years for calling her that, but yet now she wished she could hear that question just once more.

She didn't care what Yamanis did—she wanted to laugh and cry and sing all at once for the memory. But she couldn't. She was too weak to do anything except close her sightless eyes.

The world was slipping away now. She could no longer feel the throbbing agony of her wound, or the wetness of the blood leaking down her sides. Only a nothingness that she knew the meaning of.

As her entire world drifted away into oblivion, her last thoughts were more depressing than anything else…

He would only mourn her as a friend.

I feel all emotional now. :sigh: I depressed myself.


End file.
